Ray "Marion Barry" Nagin Wins NO Primary!!!!!!!

[Corlyss_D]

A bigger mystery than the Da Vinci Code is how this clown could have gotten re-elected. I say re-elected because the Democratic primary is all that counts in NO.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12872730/

[Ralph]

Well MY absentee ballot wasn't for HIM!

[RebLem]

A bigger mystery than the Da Vinci Code is how this clown could have gotten re-elected. I say re-elected because the Democratic primary is all that counts in NO.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12872730/

In what way, besides the color of his skin, is Nagin similar to Marion Barry? Please enlighten us. I don't see any similarity, but maybe I missed something.

Also, I do believe the races for NO mayor are non-partisan elections. If you had read the article the link to which you posted, Corlyss, you would have seen that Nagin is due to be sworn in for his next term on June 1. The election is over, not just defacto, but de jure as well.

[Corlyss_D]

In what way, besides the color of his skin, is Nagin similar to Marion Barry? Please enlighten us. I don't see any similarity, but maybe I missed something.

The guy could preside over the most corrupt dysfunctional city government on the planet and as long as 1) the majority of the population is black and 2) electing him can be seen as poking a finger in the eye of his critics, he will be Mayor for Life, or as many times as the locals can elect him.

[RebLem]

In what way, besides the color of his skin, is Nagin similar to Marion Barry? Please enlighten us. I don't see any similarity, but maybe I missed something.

The guy could preside over the most corrupt dysfunctional city government on the planet and as long as 1) the majority of the population is black and 2) electing him can be seen as poking a finger in the eye of his critics, he will be Mayor for Life, or as many times as the locals can elect him.

Oh, yeah, right. NO polly ticks were just hunky dory clean as a whistle as long as da white folks were in charge, but it went to hell in a handbasket when black people took over.

Corlyss, sometimes you remind me of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. "Its no use," said Alice, "I just can't believe impossible things."

"I dare say, you haven't had much practice," said the Red Queen. "I can believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast!"

[Corlyss_D]

In what way, besides the color of his skin, is Nagin similar to Marion Barry? Please enlighten us. I don't see any similarity, but maybe I missed something.

The guy could preside over the most corrupt dysfunctional city government on the planet and as long as 1) the majority of the population is black and 2) electing him can be seen as poking a finger in the eye of his critics, he will be Mayor for Life, or as many times as the locals can elect him.

Oh, yeah, right. NO polly ticks were just hunky dory clean as a whistle as long as da white folks were in charge, but it went to hell in a handbasket when black people took over.

Hardly. You assume too much, Reb. Straw men are soooooo much fun, right?

DC has always been f**king mess (because of Congress), but it didn't always have a crackhead thug in the Mayor's office. The 100-year-old commissioner system wasn't fair; and when Congress allowed that to be dumped, Walter Washington, the first mayor and coincidentally black was an excellent mayor. Barry, a civil rights activist of the first stripe whose image of government was highly redistributionist, succeeded him with all sorts of schemes to get and keep as many DC residents on the public teat as humanly possible, but scant schemes to enrich and promote the middle class in DC, with the result that most of the middle class fled to neighboring Prince Georges County as soon as they had two sheckles to rub together. So the poor and the very rich dominate DC, with the black poor far outnumbering the very rich and the very white, most of whom are limosine liberals anyway. The ONLY reason that Barry was repeatedly elected was because his behavior and his ineptitude were so outrageous that he was the frequent target of attacks in Congress, which endeared him to the people who like to stick it to "the Man." His reelections were supposed to be insulting to his critics.

NO was a corrupt cesspool before Nagin got in, but he ran on cleaning it up and typically has only linked to it rather than cleaned it up. He hasn't done anything of note and now he has billions to spread around to his chums and no apparent skill at managing anything except busing in a lot of blacks (who may or may not be legal residents of Louisiana never mind New Orleans) to vote for him. He also proves that when blacks play the race card, that's not even remarkable. But when whites talk critically about race, well, that's demonstrably racisim, don't you know.

So what impossible thing did I believe?

[Corlyss_D]

Re-elected, Nagin Is Ready to Spend, Spend, Spend

Predictions that Saturday's election in New Orleans would disenfranchise minority voters proved to be wrong, even though more than half of the city's pre-Katrina residents now live elsewhere. Some 40% of registered voters participated, about one-fifth using absentee ballots. The result was a second term for Mayor Ray Nagin, the controversial incumbent who blamed just about everybody else for the Katrina aftermath and vowed earlier this year that New Orleans would remain "a chocolate city."

Mayor Nagin came into office in 2001 as a reformer and initially scored points by cleaning up some of the city's rampant corruption. But post-Katrina, he fueled anxiety among black voters that control of City Hall would revert to whites for the first time since 1978. During one meeting with evacuees in Houston, he noted that "very few" of his opponents "look like us." In the end, turnout was high among both white and black voters. Mr. Nagin won an estimated 20% of the white vote against Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. Expectations that Republican candidates would do better with the post-Katrina electorate proved to be an illusion: Jay Batt, the lone GOP voice on the city council, was defeated in a runoff on Saturday.

Victory in hand, Mayor Nagin began to sound like his old self on Saturday night. He even praised President Bush, whom he had quietly supported in his first election back in 2000: "I want to thank you, Mr. President. You and I have probably been the most vilified politicians in the country. But I want to thank you for moving that promise that you made in Jackson Square forward. We now have $3 billion for levees. We have $8 billion for incentives. We have $10 billion for housing. You are delivering on your promise, and I want to thank you for all the citizens of the City of New Orleans." Now he tells him.

Now that the shouting is over and all the racial cards in the New Orleans deck have been played, perhaps some city leaders can finally settle down to the real task at end: rebuilding a shattered city while making sure more of the federal aid that has poured in is spent wisely and honestly.

-- John Fund

[Corlyss_D]

Drudge has an intriquing denial about the DNC in the NO race. Now that Nagin has won, they certainly wouldn't want to seem to have been working behind his back to defeat him. That crack that the DNC doesn't choose favorites in primaries is a real knee-slapper.